Latest / Reformed Thinking / When God Gives Sinners Over: The Debased Mind and the Applause of Evil (Romans 1:28–32)

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When God Gives Sinners Over: The Debased Mind and the Applause of Evil (Romans 1:28–32) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to our Deep dive. We're launching a specific
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  series today, one we're calling Reformed Thinking.
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  That's right, and that's an important framework for what
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  we're about to discuss. We're approaching the material
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  today as Protestant Christians, specifically holding to the
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  theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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  So we're looking at the text through that particular lens.
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  Yes, exactly. And it's a heavy topic, maybe
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  one of the most sobering in all of Scripture.
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  It really is. We're looking at what some of
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  our sources call the autopsy of a culture.
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  I mean, you look around the world at all the moral
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  confusion, the anger, the the chaos, right?
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  And the question on everyone's mind, believers and non
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  believers, is where is God in all this?
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  You hear it all the time. Why doesn't he do something?
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  Why doesn't God just strike this down?
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  And the sources we're digging into today?
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  These are detailed exegetical essays, sermons all focused on
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  Romans chapter 1. They give an answer that is
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  frankly terrifying. It is.
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  The answer is yeah, he already has.
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  The confusion isn't the reason for the judgement.
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  The confusion is the judgement. That's the doctrine of judicial
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  abandonment, and it completely flips our usual way of thinking
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  on its head. How so?
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  Well, we think of God's wrath as you know, active lightning
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  bolts, floods, fire from heaven. But the source material,
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  especially Romans 1.28 to 32, it argues that one of the most
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  severe forms of God's wrath is revealed by what he stops doing.
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  He stops holding things back. He stops restraining.
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  He Let's go. So that's our mission for this
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  deep dive. We're going to walk through this
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  passage verse by verse and try to understand the mechanics of
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  this judgement. You know, how does a society get
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  to this point? To the point where God says, all
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  right, have it your way. And what does that actually look
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  like in the mind, in the culture, on the streets?
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  We have to set the tone, though. This is a very serious
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  theological analysis. We're talking about what the
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  theologians in our sources call passive wrath.
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  Which doesn't mean God is passive, like he's just letting
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  things happen. No, no, not at all.
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  It means the method of the wrath is his removal of restraint.
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  It's a judicial sentence, not a temper tantrum.
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  OK, let's get into the text then.
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  Romans chapter 1 starting in verse 28.
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  But the sources are clear. To get verse 28, you have to
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  know what came before, What was the crime that triggered this
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  judgement? Exactly.
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  This is the capstone of an argument Paul's been building
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  since verse 18 and verse 28 starts and since they did not
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  see fit to acknowledge God. That phrase did not see fit.
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  I get the sense that's a loaded phrase.
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  It's incredibly loaded. In the original Greek, Paul is
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  using a very specific word, and it's part of a word play that
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  unlocks the whole passage. The word is dokimazo.
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  Dokimazo. OK, break that down for us.
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  What did that mean to a 1st century reader?
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  Well, it was a common term often used in metallurgy.
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  It means to test something, to assay it.
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  Imagine you have a chunk of ore. You put it in the fire in the
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  Crucible to burn away the impurities and find out if
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  there's any real valuable metal in it.
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  That process is Doki Mazo. So Paul is using a metaphor from
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  metalworking. Yes, and the picture he's
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  painting is just, it's staggering.
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  He's saying that humanity, the creature finite and fallen, took
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  the infinite creator of the universe and put him in the
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  Crucible. Man put God on trial.
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  They put God to the test. They evaluated His Lordship, His
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  commands, His very nature. They put him on the scales of
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  their own finite reason and their own sinful desires.
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  And what was the verdict? The verdict humanity rendered
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  was that God failed the test. They did not see fit.
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  They judged him as unworthy, unfit to be retained in their
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  knowledge. So this is much more than just
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  ignorance. It's not I didn't have enough
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  evidence for God. No, not at all.
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  It's a conscious, willful rejection, a covenantal refusal.
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  Paul goes out of his way to demolish the ignorance defense
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  earlier in the chapter. In verse 19 he says what can be
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  known about God is plain to them.
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  In verse 20, His eternal power and divine nature are clearly
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  perceived. So the data is there.
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  The data is everywhere, yeah. Problem isn't a lack of
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  information, it's an active suppression of the truth.
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  And the kind of knowledge they rejected is also specific.
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  The Greek is epignosis. What's the significance of that
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  word? Epignosis isn't just knowing
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  facts about someone. It's a deeper relational
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  knowledge and acknowledged knowledge.
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  It's knowing God, and in that knowledge, acknowledging His
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  rights as Creator, His Lordship. And that's what they refused.
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  That is precisely what they refused.
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  It's a rejection of his authority.
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  The sources bring up this idea of the myth of moral autonomy.
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  It's this belief that if we can just get God out of the picture,
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  then we'll finally be free. Right, that we become the
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  captains of our own souls. But the sources argue that's the
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  fundamental lie. Refusing God isn't liberation,
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  it is treason against your rightful king.
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  And you don't become the captain of your own soul, you just get a
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  much, much worse captain. But the specific crime, the
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  trigger for this whole process is that evaluative judgement man
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  looked at the God who made him and said, you are not worth my
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  time, not worth keeping in my mind.
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  And that act of treason leads directly to the divine verdict.
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  The second-half of verse 28. This is the frightening part.
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  After they judged God as unfit, the text says God gave them up.
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  Bread Duskin. That's the Greek.
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  Poor Duskin. And you mentioned this isn't the
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  first time he uses that word. No, it's the third time and the
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  sources all stress this. It's a drum beat, a terrible
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  rhythmic progression. In verse 24, after they
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  worshipped idols, God Paradukan, he gave them up to impurity.
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  Then in verse 26, after they exchanged natural relations for
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  unnatural ones, God Paradukan again he gave them up to
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  dishonorable passions. So there's an escalation.
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  A definite escalation. And now in verse 28, after this
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  final ultimate rejection, the judgement that God himself is
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  unworthy, we reached the climax. God gives them up a third time.
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  He paradoken them to a debased mind.
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  Well, you have to be really careful here because I think a
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  lot of people could hear God gave them up and think that God
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  is creating sin in them. Is He making them sin?
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  No, absolutely not. That's a critical theological
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  point, and the Westminster Confession is very clear on
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  this, as is Scripture. James 113 God cannot be tempted
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  with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
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  God is never the author of sin. So what does it mean then?
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  How is this a judicial act if he's not causing the sin?
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  The Reformed view which our sources layout is that God acts
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  by sovereignly withdrawing something.
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  He withdraws the restraints of his common grace.
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  Common grace? You mean the grace that keeps
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  the world from being as bad as it possibly could be?
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  Exactly. Conscience, societal structures,
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  the fear of consequences, and innate sense of right and wrong,
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  these are all gifts of his common grace that restrain evil.
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  One of the essays we looked at used a powerful analogy.
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  The one about the bridle. Yes.
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  Think of a powerful wild horse that naturally wants to run
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  wild. Common grace is the bridle in
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  its mouth, the strong hand holding the reins, keeping it in
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  check. When God gives them up, he
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  doesn't whip the horse to make it run, He simply lets go of the
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  reins. He removes the bridle.
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  He removes the bridle. He takes down the restraining
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  wall that was holding back the flood.
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  The horse then runs exactly where it wanted to run all
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  along. The flood goes where it's nature
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  was already taking. It so the punishment is in a
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  terrifying way, God granting the sinners deepest wish.
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  That is the bone chilling irony of it all.
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  The creature screams at the creator, Leave me alone, I want
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  autonomy. I don't want you in my
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  knowledge. And in an act of judgement, God
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  says OK, your wish is granted. And that autonomy from God turns
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  out to be total slavery descent. It's the ultimate bait and
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  switch, and the timeline here is also crucial.
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  The sources really stresses this isn't just about the future.
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  It's not just about hell. The text says God's wrath is
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  being revealed from heaven. Present tense.
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  This is happening in history in real time.
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  Yes. So when we look at a culture in
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  a complete moral free fall and we ask God, why aren't you doing
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  something? The theologian reading Romans 1
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  looks at that same culture and says, oh, but he has done
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  something. He has let go.
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  That's a paradigm shift. The chaos isn't the prelude to
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  the judgement, it is the judgement.
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  It is a present form of his wrath.
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  So let's look at the specific nature of that punishment.
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  The crime was declaring God worthless was the penalty.
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  Verse 28 says he gave them out to a debased mind.
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  And this is where that Greek word play I mentioned comes full
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  circle. It's really brilliant what Paul
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  does here. Remember the word for to test
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  and approve. Gokimazo.
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  Right. Well, the word Paul uses here
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  for debased is a dokimos. Negative form.
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  It's the direct literal opposite.
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  If dokimos is the pure metal that has passed the test, a
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  dokimos is the junk that's leftover.
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  It's the dross, the slag, the metal that failed the assay and
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  is thrown on the scrap heap because it's worthless.
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  Disqualified Reprobate. All those are good translations.
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  It means not passing the test. So this is the principle of lex
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  teleonis. The punishment fits the crime.
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  Perfectly. It's poetic justice in the most
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  awful way. Humanity and its arrogance
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  declared God to be a documos, unfit, worthless to be kept in
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  their knowledge. And so God in his perfect
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  justice, renders their primary faculty, their mind to documos,
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  worthless for its intended moral and spiritual purpose.
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  OK, we need to define the based mind very carefully.
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  The sources make a point to say this is not about intelligence.
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  Not at all. This is one of the most common
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  misunderstandings. A person within a docomo's mind
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  can be a brilliant scientist, a gifted artist, a CEO of a
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  Fortune 500 company. They can split atoms, build
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  skyscrapers, write symphonies. So the IQ isn't the problem.
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  The IQ is irrelevant. The defect isn't intellectual,
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  it's moral. The mind has become
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  dysfunctional at its core. It can no longer reason rightly
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  about the most important things. God, truth, goodness, beauty.
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  The moral compass is broken. It's worse than broken.
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  A broken compass just spins. This compass points confidently
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  South, and calls it N. This is what Reformed theology
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  calls the noetic effects of sin. The effect of sin on the nous.
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  The mind. Yes, the idea that our fallen to
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  sin didn't just corrupt our wills, making us want bad
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  things. It corrupted our intellects, our
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  reasoning faculties themselves. We don't just make bad moral
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  choices. The very engine we used to make
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  choices is damaged. This explains so much about our
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  current cultural climate. You can get into an argument,
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  present facts, logic, history, biology, and the other person
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  just stares at you. There's no connection.
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  Because their receiver is broken.
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  Paul is giving us the theological route of what Isaiah
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  5.2 describes. Woe to those who call evil good
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  and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for
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  darkness. It's not that they are merely
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  mistaken, it's that their reasoning is fundamentally
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  inverted. They've been cut off from the
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  source of all truth, so their ability to reason about truth
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  is. It's debased, it's a dokamose,
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  and the text tells us the immediate result of this.
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  A mine like this is given over to do what ought not to be done.
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  What does that phrase mean? What ought not to be done?
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  It means what is unfitting, improper things that go against
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  the very grain of creation, against the way things were
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  designed to be. The debased mine loses its sense
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  of propriety, of what is natural and good.
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  It engages in behavior that is self evidently destructive,
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  ugly, and disorder, but it literally cannot see it that
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  way. Which leads right into the next
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  section, the fallout, the fruit of this debased mind.
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  Paul doesn't just leave it as a general statement, he gives a
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  long list in verses 29 through 31.
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  A horrifying vice list, and it begins with a very telling word.
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  Verse 29 starts. They were filled.
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  In the Greek, it's pepperamanus. It means having been filled to
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  the brim. Filled like a container.
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  Exactly. The sources use that image when
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  you take the knowledge of God and empty it out of the human
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  heart. The heart doesn't stay a neutral
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  empty space. A vacuum is created, and nature
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  abhors a vacuum. So something else rushes in to
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  fill it. Instantly, it's immediately
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  flooded with this, this sewage of ice.
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  Paul lists 21 of them. This is a picture of total
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  depravity. Not that every person is as bad
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  as they can be, but that sin has corrupted every part of us.
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  Let's walk through some of these, because the sources broke
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  them down into categories and they're shockingly relevant.
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  It starts with the heart, with plenexia.
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  Covetousness or greed. But the Greek is so much deeper
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  than just wanting your neighbor's car.
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  It literally means a thirst for having more.
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  It's an insatiable desire that can never be satisfied.
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  Because it's trying to fill an infinite hole with finite
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  things. Precisely since they rejected
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  the infinite satisfaction of God, they're condemned to
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  frantically chase finite satisfactions that never, ever
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  deliver. It's the engine that drives all
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  the other idolatries. From there, he moves to social
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  violence, and the sources pointed out a fascinating word
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  play in the Greek that you just can't see in English between
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  envy and murder. Yes, this is amazing.
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  The Greek words are funu and fonu.
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  They sound almost identical. Funu for no Paul puts them side
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  by side. He's making a theological point
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  with rhyme. Envy.
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  Funu is the spirit of Cain. It's not just wanting what
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  someone else has, it's being grieved by their good, hating
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  them because they are blessed. And if you let that feeling
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  fester. It ferments into fono murder,
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  the desire to eliminate the person whose existence is a
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  reminder of what you don't have. It's a Direct Line.
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  Then Paul moves on to sins of speech.
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  This one hit me hard. He lists whisperers and
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  slanderers right in the same breath as murder.
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  They belong there. They are forms of social murder.
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  The sources distinguish them really well.
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  Whisperers are the secret gossips, the ones who operate in
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  the shadows, poisoning wells, destroying reputations, 1
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  private conversation at a time. They erode trust from within.
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  And slanderers. Slanderers are the public
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  character assassins. They stand in the open and tear
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  people down with lies or twisted truths. 1 destroys community
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  covertly, the other overtly, but both are the fruit of a heart
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  that loves darkness. But then, right in the middle of
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  all this envy, murder, strife, deceit, he drops in the one that
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  explains all the others, haters of God.
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  The SU Jace, that is a theological heart of the list.
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  It's the engine room of the whole shipwreck.
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  Why is there envy? Why is there strife?
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  Why is there gossip and arrogance?
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  Because at the very bottom of the unregenerate human heart,
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  there is a fundamental animosity toward the Creator.
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  It's not just indifference, it's hatred.
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  It's resentment. Resentment of his authority, His
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  Holiness, his right to rule. The natural man doesn't want to
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  be governed. He hates the governor.
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  Wow. Then the list gets even more
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  specific. Moving to the breakdown of the
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  most basic natural bonds, He uses the word astorgas.
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  Our English Bibles often say heartless.
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  Which is. It's an OK translation, but it
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  misses the specific meaning. Storage was the particular Greek
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  word for family affection, the natural instinctual love between
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  a parent and a child, or between siblings.
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  It's the glue of the family. So astorgas is the negation of
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  that without natural affection. Exactly.
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  It means that fundamental biological emotional bond has
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  been severed. The sources connect this
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  directly to what we see in our culture when a mother's bond
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  with a child in her womb can be overridden for convenience.
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  That is astorgas. When a society sees its elderly
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  not as sources of wisdom to be honored, but as burdens to be
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  discarded, that is astorgas. It's the decay of the most
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  foundational human connections. When a society becomes astorgas,
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  it begins to cannibalize itself. It stops protecting its own
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  bloodline. And then there's that chilling
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  phrase near the end of the list. Inventors of evil.
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  That one always stops me in my tracks.
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  It suggests that the old garden variety sins eventually become
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  boring to the debased mind. There's a malignant creativity
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  that kicks in. A need to innovate in
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  wickedness. Yes, to engineer new ways to
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  degrade the image of God and man, new perversions, new ways
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  to offend the Creator. It's not just practicing evil,
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  it's pioneering it. So to recap the flow, we have
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  the root sin, which is rejecting God, the verdict which is divine
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  abandonment, the punishment, A debased mind, and the fruit,
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  this whole catalog of societal chaos.
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  But Paul isn't done. Verse 32 is what the source is
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  called, the climax of the whole diagnosis.
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  It really is, because there's a huge shift that happens in this
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  verse, the shift from private action to public policy, from
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  merely doing the sin to officially approving the sin.
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  Let's read it verse 32. Though they know God's righteous
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  decree that those who practice such things deserve death, they
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  not only do them, but give approval to those who practice
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  them. The first phrase there is
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  absolutely critical, though. They know Paul circles back and
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  removes any possibility of an ignorance defense.
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  Wait, I have to stop you. How do you how does that work?
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  We just spent all this time talking about how their minds
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  are debased and their reason is broken.
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  How can they know anything? That is the terrible paradox of
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  the fallen human condition. The sources point us back to
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  Romans 2.15, which talks about the law being written on their
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  hearts, their conscience, also bearing witness.
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  The conscience is damaged, it's seared, it can be suppressed,
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  but it's not entirely erased. So deep down, there's still a
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  flicker of that knowledge. A deep, suppressed, but
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  undeniable knowledge of God's moral standard.
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  The word for a righteous decree is D chioma.
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  It's God's just requirement. They know there's a moral law
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  and they know deep down that the penalty for breaking it is
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  death. So this isn't an accidental
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  stumbling in the dark, this is a wide eyed, high handed
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  rebellion. Yes, and that's what makes the
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  end of the verse so horrifying. It's not just that they do these
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  things. They give approval to those who
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  practice them. The Greek word is cnudokyo.
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  Suno Tokyo. It's a compound word, sun
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  meaning with and udokyo meaning to think well of or to be
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  pleased with. It means to take pleasure
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  together with to applaud, to celebrate.
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  Why? That's the question that jumps
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  out at me. If you're going to sin, why do
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  you need to form a committee to applaud it?
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  Why not just do it in private? This is the psychology of
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  wickedness. The sources explain this really
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  well. The Sinner needs the crowd to
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  silence his own conscience. It's a herd.
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  He needs the word. If I'm doing something that that
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  little flicker of conscience tells me is wrong and deserves
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  death, I feel guilty. I feel isolated.
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  But if I can get you to do it with me, and if we can get our
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  whole tribe to do it, and if we can get society to throw a
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  parade for it and call it brave and stunning.
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  Then the applause drowns out the conscience.
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  Exactly. The external affirmation is used
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  to crush the internal conviction.
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  This is the critical difference between weakness and wickedness.
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  A Christian might fall into sin. That's weakness.
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  They feel the weight of it. They grieve.
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  They repent. Wickedness is when you fall into
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  sin and then you try to redefine it as a virtue and demand that
• 18:39
  everyone else celebrate you for it.
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  This is what the sources mean by institutionalized rebellion.
• 18:44
  This sounds exactly like the culture wars.
• 18:47
  It is the theological definition of the culture war.
• 18:50
  It's the move from I want the freedom to do this to I demand
• 18:55
  that you and the law of the land declare that this thing is good.
• 18:58
  It's an organized societal attempt to overthrow the
• 19:01
  dichioma, the righteous decree of God, and replace it with a
• 19:04
  man made one. So when we see corporations
• 19:07
  changing their logos for a month to celebrate what scripture
• 19:09
  condemns, or schools teaching children, that vice's virtue.
• 19:12
  We are watching Romans 1.32 in high definition.
• 19:15
  We are watching the Dokia, the collective celebratory approval.
• 19:20
  It is the final and in some ways lowest stage in the autopsy of a
• 19:24
  culture God has given over. Now, if we stop the deep dive
• 19:27
  right here, this would be profoundly depressing.
• 19:31
  Just a grim look at the world going to hell in a handbasket.
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  But the sources are insistent that Paul is a master
• 19:37
  strategist. He's doing something incredibly
• 19:39
  crafty here. He's setting a trap.
• 19:41
  A trap for who? For his reader, we have to
• 19:45
  remember who Paul imagines is reading this letter.
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  It's not just the Pagan in the street, it's the religious
• 19:51
  person in the 1st century, maybe a self-righteous Jewish reader
• 19:54
  in the 21st century. It's the conservative moral
• 19:58
  church going person and. That person is reading Romans
• 20:00
  1:00 AM. And they are nodding along
• 20:02
  vigorously. Amen, Paul.
• 20:04
  Preach it. Look at those pagans.
• 20:06
  Look at their idolatry, their sexual chaos.
• 20:08
  They're inventors of evil. Terrible they're.
• 20:10
  Feeling pretty good about themselves.
• 20:11
  They're feeling very smug, and then, just when they're at the
• 20:14
  peak of their self-righteous agreement, Paul springs the
• 20:17
  trap. The very next verse, Romans 2.1
• 20:20
  slams the door shut. Therefore, you have no excuse.
• 20:24
  Oh man, everyone of you who judges it's.
• 20:26
  Total bait and switch. A brilliant rhetorical maneuver.
• 20:29
  He built a mirror, let you think it was a window to look out at
• 20:32
  those people, and then at the last second he forces you to
• 20:36
  look at your own reflection. Because that vice list, it
• 20:39
  wasn't just the big shocking sins, he included some other
• 20:42
  things in there. He absolutely did.
• 20:44
  Slipped right in there. Alongside murder and sexual
• 20:46
  perversion are things like gossip, slander, haughtiness,
• 20:51
  boasting, disobedience to parents.
• 20:54
  Ouch. The so-called respectable sins,
• 20:56
  the. Sins of the religious, the sins
• 20:59
  we commit in the church parking lot.
• 21:01
  The point of the list isn't just to condemn the culture out
• 21:03
  there, it's to condemn the human heart in here.
• 21:06
  The passage condemns them in order to convict.
• 21:09
  Us. So the arrogance of the Pharisee
• 21:11
  and the rebellion of the prodigal both stem from the same
• 21:14
  root, that same debased mind. Theologically, yes.
• 21:17
  They are just different strategies for the same goal.
• 21:19
  Dethroning God and enthroning self.
• 21:21
  One does it by breaking all the rules, the other by keeping all
• 21:24
  the rules in order to build his own righteousness.
• 21:26
  Both are rejection of God's grace.
• 21:29
  Paul's goal is to stop every mouth, as he says in Romans 3.
• 21:32
  So if everyone is condemned, if the mind is structurally broken
• 21:36
  and can't be fixed with more education or better arguments,
• 21:40
  what's the hope? What's the way out?
• 21:43
  The diagnosis is dire. The mind is a docomos.
• 21:47
  It has failed the test. It's worthless.
• 21:49
  The only cure has to be supernatural.
• 21:51
  It has to be a resurrection. Paul points to it later in
• 21:54
  Romans 12.2. Do not be conformed to this
• 21:58
  world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
• 22:01
  Transformation Renewal, not just trying harder.
• 22:04
  You can't fix a dead engine by pushing the car harder.
• 22:07
  You need a new engine. This is where we see the
• 22:09
  beautiful, sharp distinction between the Law and the gospel.
• 22:12
  Which? Is the heart of reformed
• 22:13
  theology. It's the heart of everything.
• 22:15
  The law, which is what Romans 1 is, does its job perfectly.
• 22:18
  It holds up the mirror and says you are a Sinner, your mind is
• 22:21
  debased, you practice these things, you approve of these
• 22:23
  things, and you deserve death. Verse 32 is the verdict of the
• 22:26
  law. There's no ambiguity there.
• 22:27
  None. The Law condemns of the gospel.
• 22:30
  The Gospel announces good news. The Gospel announces that there
• 22:34
  was one man, just one in all of human history, whose mind was
• 22:38
  perfectly docmos, perfectly tested and approved Jesus
• 22:42
  Christ. He never suppressed the truth.
• 22:44
  He never harbored envy. He never gossiped.
• 22:46
  His mind and heart were in perfect, loving submission to
• 22:49
  the Father. And the great exchange that
• 22:52
  started this whole mess in Romans 1 gets reversed.
• 22:55
  A glorious reversal. In Romans, one man exchanged the
• 22:58
  glory of God for an idol. In the Gospel, God orchestrates
• 23:02
  a new exchange. Christ, the one with the
• 23:05
  approved documos mind, goes to the cross and is treated as if
• 23:09
  he were a documos. He's treated as worthless slag.
• 23:11
  He is abandoned, he is rejected, he takes the curse of the
• 23:14
  debased mind upon himself. He receives the verdict that we
• 23:17
  deserve death, and he does it so that we who are truly a documos
• 23:21
  can be united to him by faith and be treated as if we were
• 23:24
  documos. That's justification.
• 23:26
  That is justification. His perfect approved record is
• 23:29
  credited to our account, but it's even more than just a legal
• 23:32
  declaration through the Holy Spirit God, what actually begins
• 23:35
  the process of renovating our minds?
• 23:37
  He gives us the mind of Christ. He starts to fix the broken
• 23:40
  compass. So the answer to a culture
• 23:42
  defined by a debase mind isn't a political program or a better
• 23:46
  education system. It's a new mind.
• 23:48
  It is the only answer. You cannot argue a culture out
• 23:51
  of a Romans 1 spiral. A debased mind must be
• 23:54
  supernaturally reborn. This has been a heavy, but I
• 23:57
  think incredibly necessary deep dive.
• 23:59
  Let's try to summarize the sequence one last time, The
• 24:02
  downward spiral. It's a clear chain reaction.
• 24:04
  Step one refusal. Man puts God on trial and
• 24:07
  declares him unfit. Step 2.
• 24:10
  Abandonment. God in a judicial act says your
• 24:13
  wish is granted and removes his restraining grace.
• 24:16
  Step 3. Debasement Man's moral reasoning
• 24:19
  faculty becomes worthless a documose.
• 24:21
  Step 4. Chaos Society fills with the
• 24:24
  fruit of that debased mind, envy, strife, hatred, breakdown
• 24:27
  of nature. And the final step, Step 5
• 24:30
  celebration. The culture doesn't just do the
• 24:32
  evil it applauds it, institutionalizes it and demands
• 24:34
  universal approval. A dark chain, and the only thing
• 24:37
  that can break it is the intervention of the gospel.
• 24:40
  The only I. Want to leave our listener with
• 24:41
  one final thought to chew on something practical that flows
• 24:44
  goes out of this. We talked about the Greek word
• 24:47
  for approval, sunodokia. The New Testament word for
• 24:50
  repentance is metanoia. Which, if you break it down,
• 24:54
  literally means a change of mind.
• 24:57
  Metanoia. So if the root of the problem is
• 25:00
  a debased mind, the beginning of the solution is a changed mind.
• 25:05
  Repentance. That's a powerful connection.
• 25:08
  Repentance isn't just feeling bad.
• 25:09
  It's thinking differently, seeing things the way God sees
• 25:13
  them. So here's the challenge for you
• 25:14
  listening. We live in this Romans one
• 25:16
  world. It is so easy for us, especially
• 25:19
  those of us who are more conservative or religious, to
• 25:21
  point our fingers at the obvious cultural decay, the parades, the
• 25:25
  policies, the inventors of evil. To look out the window instead
• 25:28
  of in the mirror. Exactly.
• 25:29
  So take that mirror of Romans 2 and ask yourself this.
• 25:32
  Where in my life do Ioffer my own silent sunodokia, my own
• 25:36
  quiet approval to the things that God hates?
• 25:39
  That's the real question, isn't it?
• 25:41
  When you're scrolling through your feed and you like the post
• 25:44
  that's dripping with envy or slander, is that not a form of
• 25:47
  approval? When you binge watch the show
• 25:49
  that celebrates adultery and mocks commitment, are you not
• 25:53
  giving your sunodokia when you laugh along with the comedian's
• 25:56
  blasphemous joke? Or even just in conversation.
• 25:59
  When you listen to the gossip at work or God forbid at church and
• 26:03
  you just nod along instead of stopping it, you are giving
• 26:06
  approval to whisperers Real. Resistance to a Romans One
• 26:09
  culture, then, isn't just about what we are against publicly.
• 26:13
  It's about what we refuse to applaud privately.
• 26:16
  It's refusing to let our minds be entertained by and shaped by
• 26:20
  the very things that flow from a mind at war with God.
• 26:24
  It's refusing to clap when the world bows to its idols, That's
• 26:27
  where the renewal of the mind begins.
• 26:30
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive.
• 26:32
  It was heavy, but as the Gospel reminds us, knowing the truth is
• 26:35
  what sets us free. Amen to that.
• 26:37
  We'll see you next time.